Leaving Llanidloes

About fifteen minutes before my reading at the Great Oak, nobody had turned up.  We had wine, and snacks, and stacks of books, but no audience.  I was beginning to think this whole homecoming reading was going to be a dud.  I've had readings like that before.  In Waterstones, in Cardiff, the BYT team read to two people, and each other. 

But this wasn't Cardiff - this was my nearly-still home town.  I should have known better than to doubt it.  As the time approached, the people started to arrive.  There were neighbours from our street, the poet Chris Kinsey from Newtown, our good friends Ian and Danie from Llandrindod, Reg Massey, a reviewer for the local magazine Pencambria, Sion, currently doing his MA in writing at Aberystwyth, a lady who had come to view our house with her friend (it's still up for sale - a great deal, seriously, you should check it out), and another woman who came in looking for a birthday present for her daughter, and ended up buying The Drive.  And others as well.  The local paper sent its photographer, and we all squeezed in there somehow.  The wine got drunk, the nibbles got nibbled.  Afterwards a few of us went up the street to The Stag for a couple pints of Purple Moose Snowdonia Ale.  The sun was out, it was market day, and the town was buzzing. Two weeks before, we had left Llani in a mad blitz of packing and scrambling, and coming back gave me a chance to really appreciate the place we'd lived, and say good-bye.

In a few of the shops in Llani they sell these t-shirts, with an image of the town hall, and the slogan: where on earth is Llanidloes?  I never bought one while I lived there - it would have been pretty bizarre - but I actually want to now.  Just to kinda spread the word about the place.  People will read the slogan and ask me about it and I'll say, 'Llanidloes?  Well, let me tell you about Llanidloes...'  There's nowhere quite like it.